Hogan leads experienced Stanford offense

Updated 6:52 pm, Monday, August 3, 2015

Quarterback Kevin Hogan enters his senior season after having dealt with his father’s death late last year.

Quarterback Kevin Hogan enters his senior season after having dealt with his father’s death late last year.

Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle

Hogan leads experienced Stanford offense

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Nobody’s putting Kevin Hogan on a skill level with Andrew Luck. As Stanford head coach David Shaw says, you don’t put anybody on that level “outside of John Elway.”

But fifth-year cornerback Ronnie Harris says there are some things about Hogan’s game that remind him of Luck when he was at Stanford.

“He plays with a poise that resembles Andrew Luck,” Harris said Monday at the Bay Area college football media day at Levi’s Stadium. “I’ve seen both Kevin and Andrew throw an interception, and then they look at you and they’re psyched: ‘Give me the ball back.’

“As a defense, you say, ‘I’m going to get him the ball back. This is a bad man. I know he’s going to score on the next drive.’”

Hogan struggled through much of the 2014 season, and it was no secret that he was trying to cope with the pain of his father’s cancer. Jerry Hogan, 64, an attorney for AT&T in Washington, D.C., died Dec. 8.

In the final weeks of his father’s life, Hogan finally got into a calm, efficient groove on the field. Stanford, 5-5 at the time, plowed through Cal and UCLA. Then, three weeks after his father died, Hogan led the Cardinal to a 45-21 win over Maryland in the Foster Farms Bowl.

During last week’s Pac-12 media days in Burbank, Shaw said even people close to Hogan, Shaw included, didn’t know what Hogan was going through last year. “A lot of us didn’t know how bad it was because he is such a stoic person, and he seems to be able to handle so much,” he said. “I didn’t know how much that was affecting him at the time.”

In Santa Clara, Shaw said Hogan played even better in the final three games of last season than he did in the 2012 and ’13 seasons in leading Stanford to back-to-back Rose Bowls. “We got a glimpse of his ceiling, how good he can be,” Shaw said.

Hogan is the team’s unquestioned leader now as it is about to begin training camp next Monday. The Cardinal open at Northwestern on Sept. 5.

“He’s the winningest quarterback in college football right now, one of the only quarterbacks to win two conference championship games,” Shaw said.

Hogan’s name is rarely mentioned among the top quarterbacks in the country, even in the Pac-12, “because he hasn’t thrown for 400 yards in a game,” Shaw said. “For whatever reason, I always have to defend him. I don’t know what it will take to swing back the other way.”

Hogan’s play has usually taken a back seat to Stanford’s dominating defenses and usually strong ground games. That might change this year because the pressure probably will be on the experienced offense, at least early in the season, to lift a very green defense.

“Now he’s been through some rough times,” Shaw said. “He’s not going to be shocked by anything this year. He’s seen it all.”

Bowl update: Officials of the Foster Farms Bowl, Dec. 26 at Levi’s Stadium, make no bones over the fact they’d love to have Cal in the game this year because Stanford played in it last year. The Bears probably would have to have the fourth-best record in the Pac-12. The opponent will be a non-top-three team from the Big Ten.